The Regrettes Ask Us: “How Do You Love?”
In a time where all the good band names have seem to run out, it’s good to see someone is still carrying the torch. The Regrettes are a four piece band whose eldest member is just old enough to be a college graduate. They create a blend of pop punk that hasn’t quite been done before, previously dubbed with the tagline “Bikini Kill meets the Supremes.” The force and power chords of punk with the sincerity and backing vocals of doo-wop, it’s a mix that comes off as nothing short of charming. But unlike the glorious Riot Grrrl anger of the 1990s, The Regrettes no longer have to scream to be heard. They are telling you their demands of respect and you have no choice but to accept.
Spearheaded by the incomparable Lydia Night, the group met at a School of Rock program in California while still attending high school. Soon after, The Regrettes were recording together and released their debut album “Feel Your Feelings Fool” in 2017. Though it didn’t get much mass attention from the music world (to nobody’s surprise), critics adored the freshman effort, and a tight knit group of fans young and old were formed. The main kicker that set them apart from their peers was the single “A Living Human Girl.” A simple ballad validating the trials and tribulations of growing up a teenage girl, the track established The Regrettes’ maturity and humor that make them one of the most exciting rising acts today.
I had the pleasure of seeing the band live exactly a week before the release of their sophomore album How Do You Love? I went in expecting a crowd full of girls around my age with a cluster of chaperone parents standing in the back of the venue. I could not have been more wrong. Yes, there was certainly a bunch of girls that had yet to graduate high school, but there was also the mosh-pit starting adult men who also knew all the lyrics as if they were written for them. I burst out laughing on the spot because I couldn’t imagine these muscle shirt wearing, long-haired and bearded individuals to be at the right show. But as I saw them pushing into each other with the same reckless abandon one may have at a Black Flag gig, I thought well it’s official. The Regrettes really is a punk band.
The group sounded just as good live as their recorded material. Night being a force on stage, she left audience members with a smile glued to their faces while simultaneously knowing not to mess with her. Her ensemble (Genessa Gariano on lead guitar, Brooke Dickson on bass, and Drew Thomsen on drums) provided a high-energy atmosphere that acts as the canvas to Night’s vocals. The band encouraged the audience to scream and dance their hearts out, to expel frustrations and anxieties in a cathartic, musical release. For the encore The Regrettes played a single released at the beginning of the year as a response to backlash against the #MeToo movement, appropriately titled “Poor Boy.” Before the song started, Night made an announcement for all girls to come to the front of the stage for a chance to dance amongst each other without interference. It’s like she had answered my prayers, and proved again how The Regrettes are making music for a new generation.
When How Do You Love? did come out that next week, it did not disappoint. Keeping the same sensibilities that made the first Regrettes record so enjoyable, the young band’s new escapades in love and loss are able to more readily translate to older audiences, as well as those that are growing up alongside the band.
One of the qualities of Night’s songwriting that makes it so lasting is the attention to detail that puts the listener into her position and swoon at the moment’s familiarity. Whether in “More Than A Month’s” hopeless confession, “I made so many cookies I could feed L.A./ But no amount of chocolate chips could melt this pain away,” the charming “stains on your sweater” in “I Dare You,” or the rude awakening of “Pumpkin,” when Night realizes “I used to think that Romeo was full of shit/ and The Notebook was just my favorite chick flick.” The album questions how people fall in love, what makes them stay in love, and what makes them leave. The perspective may be coming from someone that is still plowing through the first formative relationships of her young existence, but as Night shows in “The Game,” she is aware this whole love thing isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a game and she isn’t always victorious, just like the rest of the world. We all deal with rejection, but Night wants to remind you that she is “A grown ass woman and not your little toy.” A message girls have seldom gotten from punk music in the past, making The Regrettes a key act of the future.
